BHUT NATH METE Vs. STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner undergoing inhibitive incarceration in West Bengal, seeks this Court's writ to be liberated on grounds of substantive innocence and processual injustice. Judicial vigilance is the price of liberty and freedom of the person is a founding faith of our Republic. So it behoves us to examine the legal circumstances of the detention in the light of the constitutional constraints under Article 22 and the procedural safeguards of the Act (the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971).

(2.) A brief calendar bearing on the landmark events, giving the core facts relevant to the legality of the detention, is necessary right at the beginning. The order of the District Magistrate, Bardwan, which cast the petitioner into jail recited that he was 'satisfied' that with a view to preventing the petitioner 'from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of supplies and sercvices essential to the community' the direction for detention under Section 3 of the Act was being made, impeccably adhering to the mantra of the law. The grounds which induced the authority's 'satisfaction' were concomitantly furnished as required by Section 6 (1), read with Section 3 (2), of the Act. "You are being detained" runs the communication.

(3.) It is a trifle mystifying that the detention order is passed many months after the three criminal break-ins, and equally strange it is that the prisoner is arrested only on February 22, 1973, many months after the order of detention was passed, there being no justification of abscondence. Long before the grounds of detention were served on the detenu (February 22, 1973) the State Government had approved the District Magistrate's order which it did on September 2, 1972. Shortly thereafter, the State Government placed the case of the detenu before the Advisory Board under Section 10 of the Act, although the actual detention was effected only in 1973. The affidavit-in-opposition by the Deputy Secretary to Government does not explain these time logs between the prejudicial acts and the preventive detention order, and between the order and the detention. The petitioner's averment in this context becomes disturbingly meaningful, for, according to him, the instances were false and when he was prosecuted in Court, the cases ended in his favour. He has stated in his representation to the Advisory Board that